How to Lock Down Your iPhone / iPad from Kids

You probably like to leave your smartphones or gadgets around, thinking that no one will touch them. What about your kids, then? With their curiosity and their want-to-know nature, leaving your gadgets around won’t be a wise (or even smart) thing to do. But don’t worry, there are some handy tools that you can use to lock your iPhone or iPad, just in case they want to pry. With these locking tools, you can put a certain access and restraints to them, so they will enjoy limited freedom in operating your gadgets.

The ideal features to do these locking actions are called Restrictions and Guided Access. The previous one is used to lock down the device all the time while the latter is useful for temporary usage.

Guided Access

This feature enables you to lock your device for certain apps. For instance, if you want the gadget to run on an educational game and app only, this is the perfect tool to use. Your kids will be able to access the apps, but they won’t be able to use other programs. This feature is using PIN code, so you can unlock your device after you are done so you can use it normally.

Setting up the Guided Access is also easy. You only need to click on Settings, go to General, choose Accessibility, and choose Guided Access. Make sure that you have enabled it and set up your own password.

To activate the feature, simply open the app that you want to lock, then press the Home button quickly for three times, and you should be able to see the Guided Access screen. Feel free to tweak the app, then. You can disable the motion, disable the hardware buttons, disable the touch system in the specific area (or even entirely), and such thing alike. There is no need to configure anything. If you want to start the session, simply click on the Start option located on the top right side of your screen.

When you press the Home Button (to go back to the main menu and leave the app), you should be able to see a notification about the Guided Access feature is being activated (the notification will be on the top side of your screen). Press Home buttons quickly again for three times and you should be able to see a PIN prompt. Simply type in the PIN you have provided before to leave the Guide Access. Simply done; from now on, you only need to open the app that you want to lock and do a triple-click of the Home button to activate the Guide Access mode.

Restrictions

As it was mentioned before, Restrictions is used to permanently lock certain apps or programs from your kids. Basically, Restrictions can be used to do a lot of things: disable in apps buying, new apps installation prevention, certain apps usage prevention, certain web access limitation, other settings lock down, and so many more. You will need to come up with a PIN code to enable everything.

Setting up Restrictions is also easy. Click on Settings, go to General, and choose Restrictions. When you enable the feature, you will be asked about PIN code that will be used to change the settings. You should be able to see a list of apps whose access you want to limit. Feel free to make changes of the content of the apps, the types, and the settings. If you want to enforce content rating, for instance, you need to scroll down to Allowed Content area. Click on the Apps section and choose the apps types your kids are allowed to install.

If you don’t want them to install apps with 17+ age rating, you can make such arrangement.

You can then click on the Website option and block the browser from automatically loading from certain websites. You can limit the access to certain websites or block websites with adult contents entirely.

In case you want to block the web completely, you can disable the access to the browser as well as disabling the feature for installing apps. By doing so, your kids won’t be able to use the installed browser or even install other browsers.

There are other settings that you can use to lock system and privacy settings, so they won’t be changed or tweaked. If you don’t want your kids from messing around with Calendar and Mail accounts, for instance, you can always find the right settings easily. There are also loads of options for the Game Center (right on the bottom) which you can use to prevent your kids from adding friends in the Game Center or playing multiplayer games.

Don’t forget that once you have chosen the settings, they will stay on until you change it with the PIN code. To disable the feature, simply click on the option DisableRestrictions, type in the password you have created, and your gadget is now free!